F1 Academy champion Doriane Pin urges young girls to 'dare to believe' in motorsport dreams

Doriane Pin, the 2025 F1 Academy champion and Mercedes Formula 1 development driver, has urged young girls with motorsport ambitions to “dare to believe” in themselves — drawing on a career that began in karting at the age of nine.

Speaking in a Mercedes interview, the 22-year-old French driver reflected on her own path and offered direct advice to those hoping to follow it. “You should believe in your dreams. It’s what drives you every day to reach it. So if your dream is to go to the greatest races in the world, just go for it. Trust yourself, enjoy, dare to believe,” she said.

Pin also revealed what she would tell her younger self: “To trust yourself because when you’re a bit younger, you don’t think that it’s possible and then you do it, and then you realise that it was easily reachable. So, you always have to think ahead.”

Her journey to the top of women’s motorsport has been methodical. After starting karting at nine and entering the national championship at 12 in 2016, she won the female category in 2019. She then moved through the Renault Clio Cup, the GT3 class of the Le Mans Cup, Formula 4 championships in South East Asia and the UAE, before claiming back-to-back F1 Academy titles in 2024 and 2025.

Following her 2025 championship triumph, Pin was promoted to development driver at Mercedes and made history in 2026 when she became the first woman to drive a Mercedes F1 car, taking the W12 out at Silverstone.

Beyond her Mercedes duties, Pin maintains a busy racing programme. She competes in the Le Mans Prototype 2 Pro-Am class in the European Le Mans Series with Duqueine, serves as a development driver for Peugeot in the World Endurance Championship, and holds a development role with Citroën in Formula E.